A Positively Poetic Priest

Almighty God, you have given your only Son to be for us a sacrifice for sin, and also an example of godly life: Give us grace to receive thankfully the fruits of his redeeming work, and to follow daily in the blessed steps of his most holy life; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (Proper 15 BCP 232) Sometimes we need examples, sometimes we need experience to teach us lessons. Jesus is a wonderful example of godly life. Jesus lived a wise life. We struggle mightily with living into the wisdom God gives us. If we didn't struggle so much with it, perhaps the world wouldn't be in the major world crises it is now in. But, of course, it is the world's problems, not ours. We are doing fine here in our quiet little beautiful Franklin. Yet, we are not either. We are struggling with many issues too. We cannot be blind to them. It seems like many of us are turning blind eyes to the issues at hand,...

O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us your mercy; that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we lose not the things eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Proper 12 BCP 231) God is our protector. God protects us from evil in this world. However, God does not protect us from the consequences of our own mistakes, our own failures of justice or relationship. God will protect us from the real power of death, but God will not stop us from all the little deaths which lead us to greater life in Christ. God is our protector, and will always protect us from true evil, but God will not protect us from our own freedom of choice. God gave us free will as a gift after all! After the last few years learning ever more about the inequality of different people in our county, my understanding...

Almighty and everlasting God, increase in us the gifts of faith, hope, and charity; and, that we may obtain what you promise, make us love what you command; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Proper 25 BCP 235) Every prayer we pray is in some ways dangerous. Prayer always changes the world. Prayer changes the pray-er, the pray-ee, and the situation, even if we do not realize it. In that way, every time we pray, we are changing the world. For those fighting for the status quo, all our prayers are dangerous. This coming Sunday we will pray for God to increase in us the gifts of faith, hope, and charity. These are especially dangerous gifts in the power structure of the world, because every act of faith, hope, or charity changes the world and realigns its trajectory towards God's justice. Attached to the newsletter today you will find a PDF of a novena, a set of prayers for nine days, leading up to Elect...

Almighty and everlasting God, in Christ you have revealed your glory among the nations: Preserve the works of your mercy, that your Church throughout the world may persevere with steadfast faith in the confession of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Proper 24 BCP 235) One good thing that national and global disasters do is draw our attention away from our own little corner of community. Especially in this day and age, we have a tendency to focus only on our own situations and our own personal community. We forget the great wide world of creation and all the things going on other places, including all the other people striving for a good life.  When we start looking beyond our own backyards, we can see the wondrous miracle of diversity throughout the world. People live in so many different ways, work in so many different environments, and prioritize different aspects of life. Usually when w...

thinking about the sky and how it is a sphere wrapped around a ball of rock and that rock cuts out the core of the sphere and so the limit there is rock, is dirt, a taurus, and the limit on the other side is gravity what holds the air to the earth, but eventually it melts off into infinity and the limit there does not exist at least as we know thinking about a brick wall in rectangular shape the limits of its existence of the formula of its function verily exist in natural states of integers here and there and here in front of your face brick in absolute unyielding tenacity thinking about skin in various shades yielding and limited within limits there exists a place where you are you and you are not but porous enough that me touching you exchanges particles, molecules, mass tininess we cannot see thinking about the world in cold circuitous routes there are obvious boundaries with absolute limits found without exception each time while other unmanageable s...

The World in a Carpet From my bed I can see written in the carpet The lines I leave traced along my pathways Telling all who see, well, I need to vacuum And the normal boundaries and routines The world through which I walk each day I go from here to there and there over Chasing a life of meaning through concrete structures  Wondering how soon it will all be forgotten  As nature continues her unending cycle Life and death and life and death and on Each part totally ordinary, made of the same carbon chains Variations on a theme of chemistry Each part different from the rest  The chances! The probability remains insane Each inch a pattern of latent pathways I just wrote a poem about carpet. Sometimes I wonder at myself.  I said in the beginning, some would be good, and some would be questionable. I think we know where this one lies along that spectrum.